by Anna Sheehan
The little thing which had impaled her was inconsequential, however, because she was unconscious. A tangle of rough grey wool, like the kind Lavender purchased to knit stockings for the poor, was twisted into her hair, matted together with the blood. Will reached for it, and her hands closed on the blooded wool. It wasn’t right, that grey wool, as if it was turning her sister into a lifeless rag doll. Ferdinand pushed her out of the way, and Will wasn’t even sure he knew who she was. His eyes were only for Lavender. The fall. It had to be the fall. Will wanted to take Lavender’s hands. She wanted to tell her she was sorry. But she couldn’t move. She just stood there in the snow, gasping for air, as she watched the love of her life try, desperately, to bring life back into the love of his.
The printers had a wonderful day with the broadsheets, even before anyone really knew what had happened.
The king and queen and the royal healer had Lavender carried to her chambers, while Will was dragged by the healer’s apprentice to her own. There she was passed off to the town healer while the apprentice went back to assist her master with the princess. The healers poked and prodded at Will, putting plasters on her scratches and checking her all over for damage. Her dress was the worst casualty of the ordeal. Officials asked her questions, and she answered them as well as she could, but she was exhausted and giddy. Narvi was the most reliable witness to the whole affair, and through most of it he had been running back and forth fetching the axe.
Will held the tangle of grey wool drenched with her sister’s blood in her hands. It felt sticky, and it was filled with rubble from the thorns. This was so like her sister. She’d gone outside intending to sedately knit along the sidelines while everyone else played in the snow. And so like Ferdinand, to draw her out of herself and remind her how to play.
Eventually the healers pronounced Will sound and left her to her own devices. Will’s chambermaid offered to help her change, but she dismissed her. What she really wanted to do was sleep. She sat down on the edge of her bed, then shifted as she realized she was sitting on something hard. Someone had lain her cloak over the bed and Will had inadvertently sat on it. What was hard in her cloak? She prodded at it until she found a round piece of wood with a broken stick through it folded into the hood. Now how had that gotten there? Moreover, what was it? It looked like a wheel from a toddler’s pull toy, with the axle snapped. A piece of Lavender’s wool had tangled – or somehow tied itself – to the wood.
She frowned at it. She debated throwing it into the fire, but it seemed like too much trouble to get up. Instead she reached over and tossed it into her bedside drawer, alongside the burned pages of The Ages of Arcana. Lavender. Will hoped she was going to be all right. The surgeon was tending her shoulder, and the healers had reassured Will that there was no reason to suspect that Lavender wasn’t going to recover. Despite that, a feeling of deep foreboding troubled her. She ran her fingers over the bloodstained wool before stashing it in the drawer alongside the broken wheel. Then she pulled out what her father had salvaged of The Ages of Arcana.
There wasn’t much. Most of it was unreadable, and much of it crumbled to ash in her hands. After sorting through the most useless pages, she found she had about ten pages from a chapter at the centre of the book, a chapter on sympathetic magic. If magic were performed on one part of a thing, the same spell could be performed on the whole of the thing, even over great distances. To her annoyance, the pages were utterly useless to her. They referred only to the power of great magics, the kind of magics she could never learn without more sacrifice than she would ever be willing to endure – taking out her heart, for example, or possibly someone else’s – but it was interesting nevertheless. She fell asleep with the singed pages falling from her hand.
She awoke a short time later, feeling uneasy. She blinked at the light from the windows, the floating blue of twilight. She was surprised that no one had woken her before then. Wasn’t she supposed to have some formal luncheon with Lesli and Narvi? Shouldn’t someone have inquired after her continued health? But there was nothing. She could hear voices in the corridors, but they seemed subdued. She changed into an afternoon dress and left to inquire after Lavender.
It was pretty easy to guess that Lavender hadn’t recovered. Half the corridor outside her chambers was packed with courtiers and recorders and priests. Will pushed her way through the worriedly whispering crowd and stepped into her sister’s lavender and lace apartments.
The princess’s favourite colours were lavender and dusty rose. Her room was warm, but pale. Will tiptoed across the pink carpets to the lavender bed, where her parents and Ferdinand sat an anxious vigil. ‘She hasn’t awoken?’ Will asked.
Ragi was pacing worriedly, but he turned to look at Will and smiled with relief. ‘No, she hasn’t. Your mother wanted to send someone to check on you, but I thought you needed your rest.’ He came up and gave her a formal embrace, as there were a dozen witnesses which had crammed their way into the little room. In sotto voce he added into her ear, ‘Next time you sneak out all night have the wisdom to lock your bedchamber door, please? I had to pretend I’d seen you this morning before all this happened.’
Will looked up at him with chagrin. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve come to see Lavender,’ she added, loud enough for the courtiers to hear.
Amaranth shifted to allow her through. The princess lay on her lavender bed, her head resting prettily on her lace pillows. Her long autumn hair was braided neatly, and lay across her shoulder like a bandolier. She’d been bathed and changed, and she looked considerably more hale than Will felt. Will’s face was marked with red lines and she stung from what felt like a hundred different scratches, but Lavender hadn’t a scratch on her. Even out like a lantern, she was unfailingly beautiful.
Everyone’s face was grave. Amaranth was unknowingly wringing her hands quietly. As soon as Will touched Lavender’s hand Ragi resumed his pacing, as he always did when he was upset. Lavender’s ladies were huddled quietly in a corner, all of them miserable, whispering sadly to one another. A few were in tears. But the thing that dropped stones into Will’s chest was Prince Ferdinand.
He sat stricken at Lavender’s bedside, gripping her pale, delicate hand. His eyes never left her face. His proud shoulders were hunched in worry, and his laughing mouth was turned down in quiet agony. Will wanted to run to him and pet his head and tell him everything would be all right. But he didn’t want her words of comfort.
‘Hey, Lavi. ’Tis Will.’ She touched her rosy cheek. She looked up at Ferdinand. ‘What do the healers say?’
‘They say she should have come to by now,’ Ferdinand said, his voice husky. ‘They say …’ He couldn’t speak.
‘They can’t do any more,’ Ragi said quietly.
‘Have you considered …’ Will began, but she bit her tongue at a look from her mother. Suggesting magic at this stage wasn’t prudent, given the fireworks of the day before. Will wondered if Amaranth also knew she had been out all night. Instead of suggesting it, she reached for Lavender’s hand again.
Lavender’s hand rested beside her little dog Dash. Dash was a silly, silky, yappy thing that Will usually despised. It had a shrill, piercing little yip that always threatened to give her a headache. She frowned. Why hadn’t he barked at her when she opened the door? He usually did every time anyone entered Lavender’s rooms. With all these people around, Dash should have been racing around the room yelping bloody murder and threatening all the ladies with torn skirt hems. Right now he was curled up by Lavender’s hip, his eyes closed. He was asleep. Will’s eyebrows furrowed. Dash woke up at the sound of a dropped embroidery needle. Why wasn’t he up and panting, yapping at all the strangers in his chambers? She reached out to touch him. She half expected him to leap up and growl at her as he always did. The other half already suspected what would happen.
The dog stayed perfectly still, breathing evenly. She poked him again. Nothing. Finally she picked him up. Dash remained limp and lifeless, like a rag dog. She’d have
said he was newly dead, except he continued to breathe in and out peacefully. But his loud, obnoxious throat remained quiet. ‘Mother. Father. I don’t think she was injured by the fall.’ Will looked up at them. ‘Or rather, I don’t think that’s all of what’s wrong with her.’
The queen frowned. ‘What do you mean, Willow?’
Will held the sleeping dog out for her to see. ‘Dash is asleep too. I think this sleep is contagious.’
One of the ladies behind Will gasped and fell senseless to the floor. Most of the others screamed as she fell. Some of the more sensible ones tried to wake her. ‘She’s caught it too!’ screeched one of the ladies, Will thought her name was Ginith. ‘We’ll all fall asleep! The curse is upon us again!’
‘Quiet!’ Ragi snapped, his head up at his full height. ‘She’s only fainted! The Sleep doesn’t come upon you like that.’ He pointed at the two most sensible ladies. ‘You, get her out of here. All of you, go. And don’t go spreading gossip, we still don’t know what’s wrong.’
‘Hettie, Mercy, help me,’ said one of the girls, and they carried the weakly moving fainting victim from the princess’s chamber. Ragi indicated that the rest follow them, and as soon as they left he closed the door on the curious onlookers in the passageway.
Once the ladies in waiting were out of the way Ragi turned toward Will. ‘Now, show me this dog.’
She held Dash out for him to see. He picked the dog up in his hands and turned him over, lifting his eyelids, listening to his breathing. Will realized Ragi was the only one who had actually been awake to see the effects of the Sleep. His face was intent to begin with, but quickly turned grave. He looked up at Amaranth and nodded his head. To Will’s surprise, Amaranth’s face crumpled, and she began to weep. Will had never seen her mother cry before. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much her mother grieved for her lost century.
There was a miserable silence for a moment in Lavender’s room, the only audible sound her even, delicate breathing. Then Ferdinand’s face lit up. ‘Wait!’ he said. ‘If this is the Sleep, then I should be able to wake her!’
A dull hope shone in the king and queen’s faces. Will’s face darkened further. She hoped it would work, but watching Ferdinand kiss her sister, saving her again, wasn’t something she wanted to see. But she would stay and watch it; she had to know that Lavi was all right. ‘Try it!’ the queen whispered.
Ferdinand looked up at Ragi. ‘Any advice, sir?’
‘Be gentle,’ he said. ‘She may be disoriented.’
There was a ruefulness in his tone that made Will curious. She wondered exactly how distraught her mother had been at finding Ragi bending over her. Had there been a physical confrontation?
Ferdinand bent over Lavender’s sleeping face. ‘Come back to me, my beloved,’ he whispered, twisting Will’s guts. Time held its breath as Ferdinand brushed his lips gently across the princess’s full, red mouth.
Nothing.
‘Try again,’ said the king. He’d been so delicate, Will might have suggested that herself. Was that even a kiss?
Ferdinand tried once more, a real kiss this time, his lips closing over hers with tenderness.
No change.
He stared down at her sleeping form. His ice blue eyes were wild. ‘No!’ He kissed her again, passionately this time, forcing her lips to open, to accept him. Will was crying by that time, but only inside. She forced the tears back down her throat until she choked on them.
The princess lay as still as death. When he finally pulled away Lavender sighed in her sleep and shifted her head a little on the pillow. ‘Oh, please!’ Ferdinand whispered. But she did not move again. He gripped her dress and held her to him, kissing her face, stroking her hair. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘No, I’m not letting you go!’
Ragi pulled him away from the girl’s sleeping form. ‘Stop. Stop! You’ll hurt her!’
Amaranth went back to her daughter and smoothed her mussed braid. Lavender’s face was smudged with red from Ferdinand’s kisses. ‘So much for that,’ the queen said. ‘I never could understand why that worked in the first place. Willow,’ she said quietly. ‘Have you any idea why this might have happened?’
Will was surprised that she asked her. She shook her head. ‘I have no idea. Unless …’ Then she stopped.
‘Unless what?’ Amaranth insisted.
‘I really don’t know.’
‘What is your theory?’ she asked patiently.
‘Perhaps … perhaps the thorns?’ Will asked. ‘The Sleep came upon you because of the spindle, and the thorns came because of the Sleep. Maybe the thorns recognized Lavender as the heir and started the cycle over again.’
‘Why do you say recognized her as the heir?’ Ferdinand asked. ‘Couldn’t it have cast the Sleep onto anyone?’
‘Possibly,’ Will said. ‘But I’ve been pricked a hundred times, and I’ve never fallen asleep.’
Both Ragi and Amaranth looked at her darkly. ‘A hundred times,’ Amaranth said, voicing their joint disapproval.
‘Yes,’ Will said, after a nervous swallow. ‘They aren’t that dangerous if you know how to handle them.’
‘I’d ask you to be more cautious,’ Ragi said. ‘You know full well they nearly killed me.’
Will opened her mouth to tell them about the stilling spell, and then realized it would probably only make this conversation worse, especially considering it was the botched spell which had caused Lavender to be injured in the first place.
‘So, we have a working theory, though in truth we can’t know what caused this,’ Amaranth said, returning to the matter at hand. ‘We know that a kiss from a prince won’t reverse this magic.’
‘What can we do?’ Ferdinand asked. ‘Whatever it takes. I will undertake any hardship.’
The king looked blank. Amaranth looked up. ‘We can try and contact Mistress Cait. If we can find her. No one has seen her since Willow’s christening. I’ll send a messenger to the Winnowinn clan as well. Ferdinand?’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you think you can find whoever gave you those beasts?’
He shook his head. ‘I never even knew who she was. I gave her my last crumb of bread, and she told me that the beasts were waiting for me in the stables of a giant. Which I had to kill first. Nothing is given easily by a faerie. She told me nothing more.’
‘Could you go back to where you found her? Try and see if she’s still there?’ the queen asked.
‘No!’ Ferdinand shouted. ‘That was in Illaria, six months’ journey away by horseback! If this is indeed the Sleep as you say, by the time I got back it would be too late!’
‘But if you could try. Whoever gave you those gifts must have known a great deal, and showed you great favour—’
‘Mother! Stop it!’ Will cried. All eyes turned to her. ‘Don’t ask him to leave her for an uncertainty. He can’t.’
Ferdinand’s eyes closed in silent thanks. Will winced at the pain this caused her, but she swallowed it.
Amaranth stood up from Lavender’s bed. ‘Mistress Cait’s our best chance,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know how much good it will do. I’ve invited her to the palace half a dozen times in the last eighteen years, and none of my messages have been answered. Usually my messengers return home seven weeks late, confused and half enchanted.’
‘Why?’ Ferdinand asked.
‘Mistress Cait lives in the enchanted forest,’ Will said. ‘One treads through there at one’s own peril.’
‘Let me go,’ Ferdinand said. ‘I will mount my white steed and use my hawk and hound and I will quest for this Mistress Cait. I will save my beloved!’
‘Don’t be mad!’ Ragi said. ‘That hawk hasn’t said a word since you arrived. The dog’s nothing miraculous, and the horse has already lost half a dozen races. You’ll only disappear, and we may still need you to wake her. We may only be doing something wrong.’
‘But that hawk led me to her before!’
‘And if it suddenly tells you where to go and what
to do, listen to it,’ Ragi said. ‘Until then, we must be rational about this.’
‘But there has to be something we can do!’ Ferdinand cried.
Suddenly a terrible scream issued from the bed, and Lavender thrashed. All four of them rushed back to her. ‘Lavender!’ Ferdinand sized her hand. ‘Lavender, it’s me, you’re back!’
But she wasn’t back. Her eyes were still closed, and her movements were the blind thrashings of a victim of a nightmare. ‘What is it?’ Ferdinand asked. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘She’s dreaming,’ Ragi said solemnly. ‘I saw this before, too. But only in some of the sleep victims. Those with seriously guilty consciences. The executioner, the lawmen, some of the ladies prone to intrigue.’
‘But what nightmares could be plaguing my Lavender?’ Ferdinand cried.
‘I can’t think of a thing,’ Ragi said.
‘I could …’ Will began, and all of them stared at her. ‘I know how you feel about magic, but … if she’s dreaming …’
‘What?’ Amaranth asked.
‘I have a dream-sharing spell,’ Will said. ‘It might take me a bit to work it, but what if the key to her sleep is in her nightmares?’
There was a long silence. ‘Do it,’ Amaranth said quietly.
‘I’ll need to double check the spell.’
‘Do so,’ Amaranth said formally.
Will took a deep breath, curtseyed neatly, and fled back to her chambers through the crowd of anxious courtiers. The dream-sharing spell was one of the spells hidden in The Zarmeroth Cycle. Zarmeroth was a long ago king of Lyndaria and well known to be one of the more powerful human wizards ever. Will wasn’t related to him, to her chagrin, his line having been conquered more than seven generations before by the Lyndar line (whose name apparently hadn’t been Lyndar before they’d become kings, but something like Halflenger). Zarmeroth had lived more than five hundred years before, and some said he was actually a faerie, or half faerie, though there was no proof of that. Until the purge, his spell books were reprinted and annotated and considered the superior work on magic in Lyndaria. The three volume set was the most practical treatise on magic that Will owned. It was also the rarest, having been one of the first to burn. Will had gotten her copy from the personal library of a courtier so old he’d only lived a week after the Sleep was lifted. He had apparently been too old and befuddled to search through his library for magic books after young Princess Amaranth had been cursed, and The Zarmeroth Cycle was overlooked.
